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Using IE5.5 at 1024 res in Win 2K I couldn't see what you meant. The menu bar goes to the bottom of the page and no-further, it does this on both test1.asp and test2.asp - i.e. I does what it says it should in the CSS - 100% of the page!

XHTML and HTML - the difference is that XHTML is stricter in its syntax. For example in HTML the following is correct:

PHP Code:

<img src="image.jpg">

in XHTML you would need to do this:

PHP Code:

<img src="image.jpg" alt="Picture of a computer" />

Note the / at the end to close the tag, in XHTML all tags must be closed, and the alt tag in XHTML all images must have the alt tag.

All tags and arguments must be lower case (for example onclick replaces onClick), everything must have a value. I.e.

PHP Code:

<td class=new nowrap>
// would have to become
<td class="new" nowrap="nowrap">

Note that the class tag is now surrounded by quotes (this is required by XHTML) and nowrap is defined (also required)

I appreciate the response. I know the basic differences between XHTML and HTML in terms of the syntax, but I don't understand why these two pages with the same exact code (except the doctype) look different.

I am running IE 6 at 1024 resolution on Win XP.

But test1 produces a scrollbar, and the "bottom" border of the menu is not seen unless you scroll down.

test2 has no scrollbar, and the bottom of the border is whereever the bottom of the browser is.

Maybe you could check again, and if not, I'll post screenshots of what I'm talking about.

I'm seeing the scroll bar problem. I looked at your page and your style sheet and suspect that your header div is bumping the main div down. If you changed the color of your main div I bet you would see that it, too, is being bumped down, not just the menu div (as the menu div is inside the main one)...

Maybe try nesting the header div inside the main div also, or try un-nesting them all.

was making the difference... i have never got any of my sites validated or asswociated with w3g... so i don't know what does that code do... but it reads like its for xhtml transition...... so, that's the line making the difference i feel...

Originally posted by fillup07 I am running IE 6 at 1024 resolution on Win XP.

Believe it or not, your "problem" is the above ^^^

Without the doctype, IE6 will display what IE5 would (which is what you want, but what is also wrong)

When I first looked at your page, I didn't see a differance, because Mozilla displayed them both "properly" (ie with the scroll bar)

Setting height:100% according to the standards, is basically not what you want to do, which is why you have problems Try adding lots of content to your page: you will see that your menu will just stop part way down. (not sure what it does in IE5, but whatever it is, it (probably) shouldn't be.)

So, to fix it: Do what you did for the header, the background image, but set it on the <body> element. Look up background-repeat somewhere, and set it to repeat-y, so that you don't get the background over the entire page.

That should be enough, but if not, just reply

Douglas

PS: Rick: The reason you see the page how you do, is because IE5 displayed the page... how IE5 displays the page (which is wrong...)

So, to fix it: Do what you did for the header, the background image, but set it on the <body> element. Look up background-repeat somewhere, and set it to repeat-y, so that you don't get the background over the entire page.

That should be enough, but if not, just reply

I've been trying a lot, but I can't get it to work.

First I did what you said, and got the picture to stretch across by being the background of <body>.

I colored the main div grey, and my page (well, this test page anyways) is looking awful.

While setting the background of the main div grey (which I might do permanetly in the future), it blocks the view of the body background. Also, the page is too wide (I have no idea why), and the left menu doesn't extend far enough.

Instead of using the background for the header, I also tried setting a header div inside the main div, but couldn't get that to work either.

Look up alistapart.com to find out how to format you list (and yes, it should be a list) I'm not going to spell everything out to you (in fact, I've probably already told you too much for your own good..)